Elefant Sunlight Makes Me Paranoid The latest...

The latest entry in the Best Band In New York sweepstakes--the quartet Elefant--has clearly shared a few dressing rooms with the Strokes and Interpol. Their songs are super-direct like the former and have a U.K. sensibility like the latter. But where Interpol draws influence from the dark days of '80s Manchester, Elefant would rather dance and make music that lands somewhere between Blondie and Pulp. Lead singer and songwriter Diego Garcia certainly sells it well, thanks to his faux-British accent, and the songwriting is average to good, if not spectacular. Anyone who looks back upon the Brit Pop craze of 1995 with misty-eyed nostalgia should look into this.